solvitur ambulando

One key to happiness: walk more.

David Hockney's recent paintings

Snow

February 3, 1852

from THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL by Henry David Thoreau

The landscape covered with snow, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, encased in snowy armor two feet thick, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic. Fair Haven Pond is a Baffin’s Bay. Man must have ascertained the limits of the winter before he ventured to withstand it and not migrate with the birds. No cultivated field, no house, no candle. All is as dreary as the shores of the Frozen Ocean. I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter. The trees, especially the young oaks covered with leaves, stand out distinctly in this bright light from contrast with the snow. It looks as if the snow and ice of the arctic world, traveling like a glacier, had crept down southward and overwhelmed and buried New England. And see if a man can think his summer thoughts now. But the evening star is preparing to set, and I will return. Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle.

Simple Gifts

a new beginning - a renewal of hope

'a big project coming up'

Great dialogue from an interview between art critic Robert Hughes & artist David Hockney:

RH: Well there you go David you've got your work cut out once again.
DH: I've got a big project coming up ... and I'm looking forward to it.
RH: Yeah you've always got a big project coming up.
DH: Yeah I have...
((pause))
RH: It's called the world mate.
DH: Yes!
((they laugh together))

--o--

Existence

January 5, 1857

"A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. “Why!” said I, speaking to his condition, “the stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, its form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt’s Island, if it had not been happy, - if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that is sprang?”

In this journal entry by Henry Thoreau, he states something that approaches a theological insight -- [existence 'pours out' of love] -- as well as (not surprisingly) a poetical insight. When people look at Henry's portrait, they often see a dour looking man. I think that he was continually in love with the world, and was constantly amazed by its beauty.

As a 'secular contemplative', Henry's writings in his journals remind me deeply of Thomas Merton's journals. In one journal entry, Merton reports watching the sun rise, and suddenly being in awe of sheer existence. And this of course resonates with Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark --

"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. . . . it is this that is mystical." --Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6;44.

--o--

silver crystal

4 January 2009

Beautiful sunny winter day. The upward reaching branches on the bare trees were glazed in clear crystal ice, which shone in the sun like gleaming silver.

***

Lawrence Weschler & David Hockney, on how we see

This is a wonderful book, consisting largely of conversations between the writer Lawrence Weschler & the artist David Hockney. Through these dialogues they jointly explore aspects of the phenomenology of perception, and the ways in which various media (painting, drawing, photography), as well as improvements in optical technology (the camera obscura, and the camera lucida) literally change our sense of what looks 'normal' or 'real.'

Thus this book (with beautiful photos of Hockney's drawings, paintings, collages, etc.) is not simply a contribution to art criticism, but also to art history, and to the broader study of the technical, historical and cultural factors that shape representation. In this manner, this book contributes to some rather deep discussions in the realm of 'media ecologies,' as developed by Walter Ong.

If all the above makes the book seem like a dusty tome, forgive me. The book is - via its conversational structure - a delight and pleasure to read. The reader is made to feel present in the artist's Hollywood Hills studio, listening in on an amazing co-exploration.